“AI and the Church,” by Jason Moore

I am currently in a doctoral program, studying semiotics—cultural symbols—which requires a great deal of reading. Probably the greatest benefit of an education is the wise guide (teacher) who can give a curated tour of the best there is in any given subject, and such is the case with this program. Dr. Leonard Sweet has opened the door to an entire world of scholars and theologians who look beneath the surface of things and reveal mysteries. Now I would like to open that world to you.

Data Crunching

My husband Dave, as an engineering major, spent a lot of time with computers in college, but the kind that needed cards hole-punched with code. I fared a little better. We at least had monitors, but had to program in BASIC, an incredibly cumbersome language. Both of us learned FORTRAN77 by the early eighties, an order of magnitude better in coding, and loved how quickly and accurately computers could crunch data and spit out a conclusion (of course, those were also the days of coming into the office Monday morning only to find out a poorly written loop had held the mainframe hostage since Friday night).

Chiefly, this is what I use AI for—to find and curate data. I do not trust Gemini, or any other model, to “understand” what it curates. The data set itself is going to be corrupt because it is scraped, more or less indiscriminately, from across the internet. What is more, the answers given by these various LLMs (Large Language Models) are known to contain bias, even magnify it, because the humans who originally produced the data—podcasts, blogs, articles, books, Twitter (X) posts—are biased.

So, I insist upon links and citations (though hallucinatory citations are also produced). All I really am asking the LLM to do is find papers and articles that speak to exactly what I want to know, then I read the paper or article myself. If I want something translated from another language quickly, I still fact-check. I ask the same question in several ways to compare answers.

Decision-Making

For a couple of years, I worked as an editor for a Christian “Got Questions?” type of site. Originally, we were to come up with our own content then edit each other, but writers, heh, are tetchy about their creations. It was not working, is the short story. So, the site owner asked Claude to come up with our rough drafts then assigned a three-layered editorial approach. I was layer one: fact-check, get rid of fluff, create a better outline and arc.

It is right here that ethical concerns arise.

It is work to clean up AI content, but it seems many do not put in the work. The world wide web is a creature of its culture, a disorganized, unprocessed display of our lived realities. Bad actors, trolls, malcontents, evil geniuses, and every possible fringe denizen are piled together with the rest. Without the work, the bias Jason Moore speaks of throughout his book will be left unchecked.

To keep from perpetuating biases, if that is our intent, we must proactively work to present a fresh approach or perspective. Otherwise, AI is given a blank check to make its own decisions about content and style, hence misinformation, plagiarism, and copyright issues (p. 72). Moore’s saying is well-spoken:

AI should do it with you, not do it for you.

Jason Moore, AI and the Church: A Clear Guide for the Curious and Courageous, 42, italics added

He cautions not to let AI do our thinking. He reminds us that AI is a tool.

Deliverables

Early on, Moore agrees that AI should not be used to lead a service, write and preach a sermon, pray (!), or disciple believers (p. 42). But, in chapter 5, Moore seeks to compare using the cutting-edge technology of AI with Paul’s use of then-current technology (such as Roman roads), and later the printing press, then even later Wesleyan innovations. Moore suggest that if AI is used not to harm, but to do good and point to God, then AI’s “outputs” have been “created for God’s glory” (p. 62).

AI, Moore explains, can help us

… better craft worship experiences, Bible studies, and other discipleship opportunities, addressing the needs of those who hunger spiritually.

Jason Moore, AI and the Church: A Clear Guide for the Curious and Courageous, 68

(I actually used AI, just now, to write that quote by using voice recognition, a real time saver.)

“Yeeees,” I reply, slowly and thoughtfully, but only sort of. A well-crafted Bible study comes through personal study, meditation, prayer, and the guidance and illumination of the Holy Spirit. A worship experience begins with a plan, but is not experienced through the plan. No, the experience is uniquely physical, emotional, and spiritual, and may very well go in an unplanned direction.

Discipleship itself, when done rightly, is organic and individually tailored, as the Lord leads, circumstances allow, and the person is willing. Can AI meet “needs of spiritually hungry people,” as Moore claims in this chapter? Hmmm. Not sure about that.

Dissemination

Job Displacement

A year or so ago, Amazon’s self-publishing arm, KDP, did a thorough audit of content because of the rise of AI usage. Many writers ended up being permanently banned from the site for having generated completely AI-written books, then creating bots to read the books. Authors for Kindle get paid by the page-click. So, these writers created bots to click the pages of their fake books 24/7 and were making a bankroll.

When I was 18 (in 1979), I played the viola well enough to be invited to be a studio musician. That used to be bread-and-butter work for instrumentalists, and vocalists. Studios paid well. You had to be good, of course. You had one run-through of the music, sight-reading, and then it was time to record for movies, television, commercials, and other background music. Today, that kind of studio work is rare, at best. First, the midi replaced live musicians. Now AI does.

So, should the fear of job displacement be downplayed (p. 72)? Well, no. Actual authors were finding their income slipping precipitously because page-clicking bots were edging them out of the algorithms.  Fine musicians find bread-and-butter work drying up, being replaced by midis, a terminal, and AIs.

After the upheaval and purge, KDP now requires every self-publishing author to sign a document each time they publish that their content originated in their own minds and is written by their own hand. Thankfully, most churches still insist on having live musicians lead worship. But both of these are simply levees built to hold back the rising tide of AI.

AGI and ASI

Deep fake, “false” facts, infotainment news, CGI-ified ads, that is all really real. Anyone’s image and content can be coopted by AI for any purpose, if it is uploaded to the world wide web. Bad actors use whatever they can get hold of to do their internet crimes. Some might say universal access to AI is the danger. Others, claim otherwise. It reminds me of the NRA’s slogan, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” coined to press back against the outcry for stronger gun control. Remembering that, I get a weird, wrinkly feeling when I read Moore’s statement,

… this isn’t an AI problem as much as it is a people problem …

Jason Moore, AI and the Church: A Clear Guide for the Curious and Courageous, 97

Moore reassures us that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), and especially ASI (Artificial Superintelligence), are a long way off, (pp. 23–25). Yet, while courts are busily working on copyright law and programmers are working on guardrails, I am left with this unsettling thought: nuclear weapons do not destroy nations, people do. Once it is invented, well … there it is.

Discernment

I like computers, I like new technology, I like the AI I can currently take advantage of. I like my smart bulbs, my smart phone, ability to self-publish, to make videos (and so forth). But, I am not sure yet how I feel about the advances in AI.

I appreciate all the links and pro tips in the second half of Moore’s AI book. I will keep it on my desk as a handy resource. That said, I am still circumspect about some of Moore’s suggestions for using AI. Perhaps it is my age.

Yes, agreed, the world is changing, like it or not. Yet in an unexpected counterrevolution, fewer young parents are permitting access to images of their children on the internet because of how those images might be used. Millennials and Mosaics are actually bringing back the local store and hangout rather than order online, which I see as a good thing. People still need to be with actual people, it is how our brains are designed. And people still have the creative urge. People will write and make music, write and read books, paint and sculpt, and in a thousand ways express their creativity. As Moore said, AI makes creating video and content a lot easier, and the quality a lot slicker.

But.

People will still—I hope—buy pottery, and paintings, and CDs at live concerts.

Devotion

Which brings me to the Church. It is one of the very last places where people can make live music every week and other people are there to enjoy it. The church is the living body of Christ.

Teachers learn that the best way to teach is to ask the kinds of questions which help the student arrive at insight from within themselves. Such lessons are seldom ever forgotten.  Moore speaks of the 65% percent of humans who learn visually, and their learning ability increases fourfold when given images (pp. 153–154). That is convincingly impressive to use images when teaching.

But, I have another statistic. 

I asked Gemini to do some digging for me, searching for data. The Knowledge Pyramid, on a site that looks legit and which matches what I have come to learn as a lay counselor and Bible teacher, states that …

… Data (components), Information (processed data into something that is meaningful), and Knowledge (a skill or larger piece of information within a system) are connected to Wisdom, where we add context, judgment, and the ability to see more broadly than the other layers.

Indogene, “Understanding the Science Behind Learning Retention,”​ Future Ready Healthcare (italics added)

Here is the point:

Wisdom does not come by asking other minds to do our processing for us.

We must do that processing ourselves, including living out what we come to understand is true.

A maxim I have lived by in my years as a teacher comes from research published by Edgar Dale stating that we retain …

… 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we see and hear, 70% of what we discuss with others, 80% of what we personally experience, 95% of what we teach others [having first processed it ourselves]

Edgar Dale, “Teach Less, Teach Better, Teach it Again and Again: Cone of Experience,” Stephen Seyfer, ed.  Causing Learning (emphases added)

Moore cautions us not to let AI do our thinking for us.

But that is exactly what we are asking it to do when we ask an LLM/AI for a sermon series, or a sermon outline, or to create a worship service, or to write lyrics and music.

Deception

On the one hand it is a time-saver (more or less. It depends). But on the other hand, when we no longer wrestle with the internal work of doing these things ourselves, we become weaker, and that weakness is not just in that one spot. It will spread to the rest of our inner landscape, because that is how people are.

Think about these examples:

1. Giving a chatbot a persona, having it interact with church members and visitors who visit the church’s website as though it were an actual human being (pp. 135, 200).
2. Creating something that looks like a photo of a personal event years before and for which no photo actually exists, then displaying it as real (in other words, not admitting it is an AI creation) during a sermon (pp. 154–158).
3. Pastors consulting AI as a spiritual companion during sermon prep (anecdotal reports).

Sole-Source Versus Soul-Source

Might AI be of benefit to the Church?

There are three grave concerns:

Ethical

AI training is based upon stolen intellectual and artistic property. Over a hundred copyright lawsuits leveled by writers, visual artists, and musicians, are making their way through the courts as I write these words.

Environmental

AI servers require significant amounts of electricity to train and run LLMs and generative AI.

Existential

In the matter of spiritual collaboration with material collated from a wide variety of sources, where is the work of the Holy Spirit?

How does this fit in with the formation of a life of faith, and trust in the ferment of the Holy Spirit?

Will AI be a shortcut that sidesteps hope in becoming ever more like Christ, mastering the ability God gives us? Or is AI an electronic messiah which will do our hard work for us?

Will AI be a temptation to isolate as sole-source rather than co-create with other human beings as soul sources?